Intuition Pumps and Cold Spies
Sep. 21st, 2013 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
essentialsaltesIntuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, by Dan Dennett.
Sadly, I was not very impressed. The book sets out to be a set of tools for thinking about thinking, and does start out with a pretty basic set, well described. But the later parts of the book seem less like teaching a non-expert about these things, and more like Dennett taking swings at his philosophical adversaries.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John le Carré. (Spoiler-tastic Wikipedia page.)
"In 2005, the fiftieth anniversary of the Dagger Awards, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was awarded the "Dagger of Daggers," a one-time award given to the Golden Dagger winner regarded as the stand-out among all fifty winners over the history of [the British Crime Writers Association]."
I can't say much more than that, other than that it very likely deserved it. Bleak, psychological, amoral Cold War subterfuge. What's not to love?
Sadly, I was not very impressed. The book sets out to be a set of tools for thinking about thinking, and does start out with a pretty basic set, well described. But the later parts of the book seem less like teaching a non-expert about these things, and more like Dennett taking swings at his philosophical adversaries.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John le Carré. (Spoiler-tastic Wikipedia page.)
"In 2005, the fiftieth anniversary of the Dagger Awards, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was awarded the "Dagger of Daggers," a one-time award given to the Golden Dagger winner regarded as the stand-out among all fifty winners over the history of [the British Crime Writers Association]."
I can't say much more than that, other than that it very likely deserved it. Bleak, psychological, amoral Cold War subterfuge. What's not to love?
